


but i needed him too

by airplanetrails



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Death, M/M, One-Shot, Stucky - Freeform, What If Steve Fell Instead, eulogy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 05:23:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5696605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airplanetrails/pseuds/airplanetrails
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky gives a eulogy for the boy from Brooklyn he was suppose to follow till the end of the line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but i needed him too

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my dear buddy who kept bugging me to edit this. Here you go xD

It just seemed like one big cruel joke that the world played on Bucky. Steve had survived countless bouts of pneumonia, back alley fights with opponents twice his size, being experimented on by (completely mad) scientists, Nazis, burning buildings and everything in between. Bucky had been offered a desk job and Steve technically hadn’t enlisted, although he supposedly ranked higher than Bucky. But Steve had insisted on completing that last mission to intercept that train and Bucky could never trust anyone else with watching Steve’s six. So he went. And had to watch as Steve, the boy...the man he loved since he knew what it meant to love, fell into the abyss of the Alps. 

Of course they wanted him to give a eulogy. Captain America’s best friend. Who better to give a eulogy than one of the few people who knew Steve as Steve and not just the hero Captain America. 

“H-hello. I’m Sergeant James Barnes of the 107th, that was rescued by Ste...Captain America”, voice cracking as he continued, “He was...he was my best friend.” 

“But before he was Captain America, he was just a boy who was too fragile for a world too cold. He was a flickering candle in the billowing gale, always stood up against the darkness, against bullies, even if they were almost twice his height.” Bucky almost chuckled out the last part, a bittersweet smile softening the frozen mask he had put on as he stepped onto the stage. 

“He loved too much, hurt too much, but was loved too little, He was shoved, kicked, punched. But he always stood back up. Even if that just got him beat down again... He was a hero before the world crowned him one. And he may be go-...” his voice catching, as he broke off rubbing off the tears he hadn’t realised were welling in his eyes until he couldn’t see the words he’d scribbled on the card. “Goddamn it. He is gone. My Stevie is gone. And I’m still here.” he choked out mostly to himself, like it had only just registered in his mind, as he covered his eyes wishing he could just hide from all the tear-streaked faces of children clutching their Captain America comics.

But he owed it to Steve to finish what he knew Steve would want him to say. 

“The world needed Captain America, and Steve was always ready to give himself up for that. Ready to give up a life as Steve Rogers for Captain America. But now he’s gone and he took both of them with him.” 

“Look I’m not saying we need more Steve Rogers, because there will never be anyone like him. Not in this century and probably not in the next...Damn right there will never be anyone like him. We don’t need anymore Captain Americas either.”

“I think the world has had enough of costumes and cowls.” He chuckled, breath hitching halfway as he laughs bitterly, tears dripping down splattering onto the medals that made him want to yell, to scream, to break something, to bleed, because they weren’t his, they weren’t suppose to be his. Steve should have been the one here, a beacon of everlasting hope. Not him, bleeding his heart out in front of all these strangers.

“What we need are more boys, girls, men, women, to stand up for what is right. To fight when everything seems dark and keep burning brighter.”

“Just do right by him. Make the world a better place. That’s what he would have wanted.”

“Thank you.” 

No one would have identified that hunched up blue figure that stepped of those steps as Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, he looked like a man who had seen too much loss. Trying to be swallowed into his coat, to just disappear. His eyes were bloodshot, red rimmed, still wet with unshed tears, yet looked dead somehow, as if the light in them had been extinguished, staring blankly at the world like all the colour had been drained from the world around him.

He was the kind of broken that was set all wrong and would never work right again. 

~

Five weeks later. The administration would report. James Buchanan Barnes. Missing In Action after a mission gone wrong, lost to the freezing waters of the Arctic.

Mrs Hunningtons would swear to anyone who would listen, that that night, the light of their apartment was on and she heard laughing. She went investigate only to find drawings billowing in a non-existent wind, a flickering candle on the window sill, standing tall against the winter chill.


End file.
